Ajitabh Pandey's Soul & Syntax

Exploring systems, souls, and stories – one post at a time

Category: Solaris/AIX/HP-UX

Solaris10 on VirtualBox
I installed Solaris10 11/06 on VirtualBox 1.5.6 OSE. The first problem immediately after installation I faced was that of mouse not being captured by virtual machine. So I open a terminal window and start the vold and then ran the volcheck command.
```
/etc/init.d/volmgt start
volcheck
```
The mouse started working after this. The reason for this I guess is because I did not had the mouse inside the virtual machine while booting. I need to confirm this.

Moving the home directory of root from / to /root:
Changing the home directory of root using “usermod” command does not work as the root user is logged in. So edit the /etc/passwd file and change root’s home directory to /root. Logout and login again. After that remove all the /.* files and /Desktop directory.
```
vi /etc/passwd
rm -rf /.*pwd
rm -rf /Desktop
```
Installing third-party tools

Next I need to install third party tools in the virtual machine. I downloaded the “pkg-get” as:
```
pkgadd -d http://www.blastwave.org/pkg_get-3.8.4-SunOS5.8-all-CSW.pkg
```
Next I downloaded the static version of the wget utility using mozilla from http://www.blastwave.org/wget-i386.bin and renamed it as wget.
Next I put the directory containing the wget utility and the /opt/csw/bin directory in default PATH. The first thing installed was wget itself, so that I can get rid of the static version.
```
pkg-get install wget
```
Patch check advanced is a utility which I installed next to apply patches to the operating system.
```
pkg-get install pca
```
The gnupg program was needed to verify the signatures on the catalogue files. This can be installed as:
```
pkg-get install gnupg
```
To install the gpg key of the blastwave repository use the following commands:
```
wget --output-document=/tmp/gpg.key http://www.blastwave.org/mirrors.php
gpg --import /tmp/gpg.key
```
Like this:
Like Loading…
July 27, 2008
Swap Space Management in Solaris
The swap utility provides an administrative interface to the management of the system swap areas. A standard swap partition which is not under the volume manager control cannot be resized, but swap space can be added using swap files.

Create a swapfile of 512MB in /local:
```
mkfile 512M /local/swapfile01
```
Add the swap to system swap space:
```
swap -a /local/swapfile01
swap -a /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s1
```
Add /etc/vfstab entry to add the swap space to make sure it is recognized after reboot:
```
/local/swapfile01       -       -       swap    -       no      -
/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s1       -       -       swap    -       no      -
```
Delete a swap space:
```
swap -d /local/swapfile01
swap -d /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s1
```
The /etc/vfstab entry has to be removed after removing the swap space.

List swap space:
```
swap -l
```
List swap space statistics:
```
swap -s
```
Like this:
Like Loading…
April 11, 2008
Timezones in Solaris
The available timezones in solaris are listed in /usr/share/lib/zoneinfo/
To find out the current timezone on the system:
```
grep '^TZ' /etc/TIMEZONE
```
and in order to change the timezone, modify the TZ line in /etc/TIMEZONE and then reboot the system.

Like this:
Like Loading…
April 11, 2008
Changing the IP Address of a Solaris System
Use ifconfig to change the IP address immediately
```
ifconfig    
```
If the new IP address calls for a different gateway then change it using the route command:
```
route add default 
route del default 
 
```
Change the hosts’s IP address in
- /etc/hosts file to take effect after each reboot
- /etc/inet/ipnodes (for Solaris 10)
Change the host’s subnet mask in /etc/netmask

Change the host’s default gateway in /etc/defaultrouter

Like this:
Like Loading…
April 11, 2008
Moving data to a seperate filesystem
Often its required that the a directory (for example /home)be moved to a seperate filesystem. The steps are simple:
- Boot system in single user mode (linux single), or if already booted take it down to single user using,
```
init 1
```
- Create a new partition if its not already done.
```
fdisk /dev/hda
```
- Create the filesystem on the new partition
```
mkfs.ext3 /dev/hda3
```
- Mount the filesystem under a suitable directory in /mnt
```
mkdir /mnt/newpart && mount /dev/hda3 /mnt/newpart
```
- Copy all files from the directory /usr to the new directory using
```
cp -a /home/* /mnt/newpart/*
```
The following steps needs to be done in a sequence.
- Rename /home
- Create new /home/ directory
- Mount the new filesystem in /home
- Update the /etc/fstab
```
mv /usr /old-home && /bin/mkdir /home && /bin/mount /dev/hda3 /home
```
Like this:
Like Loading…
June 23, 2006